As she explains in her diary, seventeen-year-old Gloria Random is running away from her Midwest childhood home. It's the fall of 1969, and her best friend John has been called up for the draft. It's time to escape the Big Finger, and their mundane lives.
Renaming themselves Witch and Roy, they head to New York City in search of Witch's biological father. Landing in the East Village, they fall into an underground world of mysticism, drugs, and free love as they burrow further into hiding from the realities they left behind.
"His characters have a dignity and a tragic dimension. . . A vivid, compelling portrait of American flotsam that's as resonant now as it was back then."
The Guardian on Midnight Cowboy
"Herlihy is one of the more arresting writers to make the scene and there have been dissonant comparisons from Capote and Williams to Steinbeck."
Kirkus Reviews on Midnight Cowboy
"His characters are distinctive. He has a sense of place, which he vividly conveys to the reader. Above all, there is originality. Mr. Herlihy follows an inspired tradition of contemporary American writing."
